St Benedict's Catholic Primary School

EYFS - NEW STARTER INFORMATion

Thank you for choosing St Benedict's Catholic Primary School for your child's education. We are very proud of what we do for the children in our care. Although things have been very different for us in school in the last few months, as they have for everyone across the country, we hope this page helps you understand what we do at St Benedict's. 

Normally, we would have had a school open day where the older children would have given you a tour of their school. Sadly COVID is preventing us doing this at the moment. We still hope you can use our website to look at St Benedict's to understand how to help you and your child to have the best start in their Early Years Education. 

Our Early Years team have been preparing information to help you and your child familiarise yourself with life at St Benedict's Catholic Primary School.

St Benedict's - An 'Early Adopter' School (September 2020)

We have started this school year with an exciting development for our ‘Early Years Foundation Stage.’ The government is preparing to release a new document of ‘Curriculum Guidance’ for the ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’ in September 2021. Our school has opted to be an ‘Early Adopter’ of this new guidance and will be piloting the ‘New Early Learning Goals’.

Please see the link below to view the Statutory Framework for Early Years Foundation Stage and the updated Development Matters:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-adopter-schools-eyfs-framework

Information letter for parents (please see below)

The EYFS Framework
There are seven areas of learning and development that scaffold the children’s educational provision in Early Years. All areas of learning and development are important and are inter connected. No area of learning can be delivered by itself. Our children’s learning experiences enable them to develop competency and skills not just academically but also socially, emotionally and physically.

There are three prime areas, which are:
Communication and language
Physical development
Personal, social and emotional development

There are a further four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied.
The specific areas are:
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the world
Expressive arts and design

All of these areas of learning are connected together. The characteristics of effective learning (playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically) weave through them all. That’s because children in the Early Years are becoming more powerful learners and thinkers. These characteristics develop as they learn to do new things, acquire new skills, develop socially and emotionally and become better communicators.